Guilds: Decoding the Allure

Guilds: Decoding the Allure By Vasily Tedeev V is happy that he took up writing again, something he had dreamed of doing ever since he was nine years old. Being a nonconforming combination of a social party animal and a gamer, he realized that his life amounted not to just games and women, but that he had to pursue his passions and self-development in other areas as well.

An established and thriving community can be one of the most rewarding aspects of an MMO experience. You meet a lot of different people during your online adventures - a vast collection of personalities, opinions and mindsets, both real and fake. Maybe you connect with some of them and whatever small link initially ties you together now gets a chance to grow into something stronger. You see this all around you, especially in the way guilds can influence our behaviours and our enjoyment of a game. At times, the actual gaming experience might be second-rate but we keep logging in - what for? Some guilds never really seem to take off, disbanding soon after they have been formed. Others stay together for longer periods of time and some gaming communities even migrate from one game to another.

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Today we take a look at what motivates us to join guilds and structure our gaming experience around them. It is completely up to you how to make use of this information. Some of it may sound too raw, insensitive even but please keep in mind that we are talking about the core reasons for forming alliances rather than personal motivations. Read this for the sake of interest and gaining a deeper understanding of why groups work in a certain way or simply to tap into the potential of your own guild.

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Make me bigger, faster, stronger

Since the beginning of humanity, community has always been the place where people come together and form social ties and relationships. We meet and we want to talk, laugh, cry, love and fight with each other. This inherent need to socialize comes from the desire to survive in a hostile environment and is a basic requirement of nature. It doesn't extend to just humans as studies have shown that even animals prefer to live in formed communities and rely on each other for survival. The modern day equivalent would be forming a group to achieve specific goals and perform certain activities. In MMOs, players who like raiding organize groups to run dungeons on a regular basis, others tend to draw a more pvp-orientated crowd with the aim of competing against the rest, some band together only to role-play. At the basis of every group is an intricate web of common aims and similarities.

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This marks the importance of attitudes and ambitions that bring people together. In an MMO setting, a guild provides you with safety, security and additional advantages of being part of an organized group. Scientific studies in this area revealed that the presence of other people also improves our own performance, especially when the task you do can be used to display your personal ability and achievement. This leads to situations where people are generally willing to help each other out to achieve specific wants and each member gets a part to play. A typical example - regular players may donate materials for crafters to improve their skill that in return make various items and equipment that people in the guild can use.

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